It is amazing how fear sells.Fear is also a highly motivational tool. If it is used by individuals with the wrong intentions, it has the ability to control people and even a nation…a few well placed words within the powerful media can control people’s actions and possibly paralyze them completely. I’m sure we can all relate and say…yes, it has happened to me.

A few months ago, there was a civil disturbance in a region of the world. The authorities were able to quickly get everything under control. Unfortunately, some elements of the media widely distributed the story throughout the world causing many to cancel their travel plans completely. The highly provocative story that was circulated caused many potential tourists to stay away. This example has been repeated more than a thousand times over the years. The financial loss is well into the hundreds of billions of dollars to the many vendors and suppliers who were counting on the business which never materialized. Unfortunately, this is followed by a certain amount of “lag” time, which means it will take many months or years for the traveler to “mentally” move on and forget any incident happened in a particular city, region or country. They just take their travel dollars and spend it elsewhere.